Spin Recovery Altitude

[photofly]

On the one hand training people to fly at and through a warning horn is very bad teaching. Imagine training nuclear power-plant operators to ignore the "criticality" alarm ("look Ma, I've got the boron rods removed just far enough to keep the pile right on the edge of a meltdown, can you hear the alarms going off in the background?") but on the other hand, learning to fly at and through the edge of a stall and unstall an airplane is really basic stuff, without which you're not safe.

The only logical conclusion is to remove the warning horn entirely

[digits_]

The main issue with efficient spin training, is that it is mainly done in an airplane that does not want to spin. If you want to show people the danger of a spin, spin an airplane that can properly do it, or even wants to spin. The most effective "a-spin-can-be-dangerous" demonstration I've ever had was on my non-Canadian FI ride in a Robin airplane where the examiner demonstrated the base to final uncoordinated turn while pulling up. That was very effective.

The attempts at spinning a 172, which
a) didn't want to spin
b) recovered without doing anything
were ok to learn the recovery techniques, but didn't really help much practically speaking.

[photofly]

Not many planes are certified for spins any more. So we are effectively forcing everyone to learn in a Cessna, or a DA20.

[digits_]

Not many planes are certified for spins any more. So we are effectively forcing everyone to learn in a Cessna, or a DA20.

Oh I know. I understand why it is the way it is, I just don't think it is very effective. If the regulator thinks spin training is important -which seems to be their current position-, then their should be ways to realistically provide this training. Now it's just a checkbox.

I'm wondering though, and this is probably a question PilotDAR would be ideally positioned to answer , why are we not allowed to spin planes that are not-certified for spins? Even the planes not-certified for spins, are recoverable from a spin, otherwise they wouldn't have been certified at all. There are some bits and pieces of info out there, but I haven't gotten the full picture yet.

So what's the difference for certification? Could we get an STC for example for a cherokee, to allow intentional spins on the plane? Is intentional spin certification always linked to utility category certification?

[lhalliday]

I did my PPL spins in a Cherokee. Minimum entry altitude 4000 AGL, minimum recovery altitude 3000 AGL. They spin fine, but take aggressive (abusive?) control inputs to do so.

My Musketeer is not certified for intentional spins (slow recovery plus a tendency to spiral). I got an incipient spin once over Glen Valley and spin training saved my butt. Power-on stall -> wing drop -> WHOOPS!

...laura

[Big Pistons Forever]

My Musketeer is not certified for intentional spins (slow recovery plus a tendency to spiral). I got an incipient spin once over Glen Valley and spin training saved my butt. Power-on stall -> wing drop -> WHOOPS!

...laura

I would l suggest that based on what you described you did not do a "spin" recovery. Instead you recognized the aircraft was departing controlled flight and regained control by lowering the nose to reduce AOA and controlled the developing yaw with rudder. or in other words used spin recognition and avoidance techniques to stop the aircraft from entering a spin.

Only if you had failed to effectively deal with the initial departure from controlled would you have had to use tradition spin recovery which is a highly undesirable situation

[rookiepilot]

Does the regulator honestly believe a spin entered from the base to final turn, 4-600 AGL, is recoverable?

You first.

[PilotDAR]

Even the stall training we do is negative training since we ignore the stall horn and continue into a stall.

Hopefully because an aspect of recognizing a stall is not depending upon a stall warning horn. A plane may be certified with no stall warning system, simply tactile buffet for the pilot. We discussed elsewhere training with the ASI covered, train with no stall warning system. 'Every heard of one failing? Or, you're hurtling through the sky in your 182, you have an engine fire, you run the checklist, item three, turn off the master - will your stall warning horn still work after that? Or should you be planning to do a power off landing with no stall warning system? It's a warning system for the lawyer's needs, less so for an aware pilot.

All single engine planes (maybe Cirrus excepted? I'm not sure) are required to demonstrate recovery from a one turn spin in not more than one additional turn. All spin approved planes are required to be recoverable without unusual pilot skill and attention, and the plane must be recoverable in one turn at any point during a six turn spin. Note that depending on cabin occupancy, a 172 might be in one, or the other category - for a reason. The reasons we don't intentionally spin non spin approved planes are: The type, while recoverable, may require pilot skill or attention considered "unusual" for many pilots. A specific example which comes to mind is the possibility of overspeed/over stress during a recovery. On some types I have spun, I have installed a G meter, and needed it! Yes, the plane recovered as prescribed, but there was a high G and speed during the recovery, Inattention to speed and G would have been unsafe. And, it is possible that a type may recover okay after one turn, but not so well after many turns. The fact that a pilot intends a one turn spin does not mean it works out that way. It could be possible to have a non spin certified plane in a multi turn spin, and it's really difficult to get out.

Using a 172 as an example, if you have people/mass in the back, the C of G is farther aft, in it's harder to recover. A few foolish accidents with four up are probably evidence of this. But, it's a trainer, so it needs to be spinnable, and is, as long as you keep the C of G forward. 'Similar for the C 206, easy to recover at a forward C of G (though builds up speed), alarming to recover at an aft C of G. I presume that Cessna saw no need to certify the 206 for spinning at all, so they do not define a C of G range suitable for spinning.

I've found other types very easy to recover from a one turn spin (Lake Amphib comes to mind), but again, there is no demand for spin approval for training for such a plane.

Does the regulator honestly believe a spin entered from the base to final turn, 4-600 AGL, is recoverable?

Normally, no. You can't certify for every possible problem a pilot could get into....

[rookiepilot]

[

Does the regulator honestly believe a spin entered from the base to final turn, 4-600 AGL, is recoverable?

Normally, no. You can't certify for every possible problem a pilot could get into....

Where do stall - spin accidents originate from?

The base-final turn, at 400 AGL, or in cruise at that safe 4000 AGL altitude?

[PilotDAR]

Where do stall - spin accidents originate from?

The base-final turn, at 400 AGL, or in cruise at that safe 4000 AGL altitude?

We could seek certification to prevent stall spin accidents entirely: "Flight below 500 feet AGL prohibited, that'd do it! Cessna tried a different approach to the problem: Seat belt airbags. I tried them at a Cessna symposium in Wichita once, I was not convinced - better to fly properly!

[rookiepilot]

Where do stall - spin accidents originate from?

The base-final turn, at 400 AGL, or in cruise at that safe 4000 AGL altitude?

We could seek certification to prevent stall spin accidents entirely: "Flight below 500 feet AGL prohibited, that'd do it! Cessna tried a different approach to the problem: Seat belt airbags. I tried them at a Cessna symposium in Wichita once, I was not convinced - better to fly properly!

This nothing to do with certification. I'm questioning the value of training for a situation that isn't likely to happen, at the expense of training to prevent a situation much more likely to happen.

[Big Pistons Forever]

Flight training by design is broken down by exercise. One of the disadvantages of this approach is that it can lead instructors to treat each air exercise as a discrete event. Good piloting means recognizing the flight conditions as a spectrum with a constant evaluation of the aircraft's current flight path against the desired flight path and action, sometimes urgent action taken to regain the desired flight path.

For the typical tragic 600 ft stall/spin/die accident the root cause of the final irretrievable loos of control was not a lack of spin recovery training, it was the failure to see the aircraft flight path condition deteriorating into the slow flight regime, and taking corrective action, then the failure to prevent the aircraft AOA reaching the stall value and immediately recovering, and then the failure after the aircraft had stalled to control yaw to prevent the final loss of controlled flight.

The challenge for flight instructors is to instill in their students the knowledge, skill, and discipline to consistently monitor the flight path of the aircraft at all time's during the flight and take early and effective action to restore the aircraft to the desired state when it deviates from that.....and no, looking at the airspeed indicator more is not the solution

I have a reputation as being a bit of hard ass, riding my students pretty hard to sweat the small excursions from the ideal flight path even when it doesn't really matter. So for example if it is smooth air and the student is 50 ft above the desired cruise altitude I expect them to initiate a small correction to return to exactly the correct altitude. Now a 50 ft altitude excursion will almost never have a material effect on flight safety but I want to instill in the them habit of fixing the little deviations before they become big ones.

Finally and back on topic. Most POH's provide definitive direction on the minimum altitude for intentional spinning. Not following those limits, is foolish and, IMO sets a terrible example for the student.

[rookiepilot]

Got it.

A) Don't teach proper aircraft handling in the circuit, but at 6000 feet where the sight picture is completely different,

B) Don't ever teach IFR training in bumpy IMC, but only on severe clear days, where the plane practically flies itself.

See a pattern here, and I apologize for the thread drift.

We will continue to see stall spin accidents on the base to final turn in VFR, AND pilots losing control in IMC, as dominant fatal accident causes.

[Squaretail]

The conundrum lies in the fact that if someone were to be so oblivious as to get into a spin at low altitude, they probably don’t have the wherewithal to recognize what is unfolding and suddenly increase their skill level to make the recovery. Is it possible to do a life saving recovery from a spin at that low altitude? I believe so, however by the skin of your teeth, depending on circumstances.

That said, in my experience, pilots who have been exposed to proper spin training don’t get themselves into the position where they are in that danger. Almost without fail when I have been with pilots -and I have a reasonably large sample size - that have not done spin training, or also in many cases had minimal stall training as well possibly never having experienced either, will put the airplane in that dreadful condition in the aforementioned turn on final.

I don’t see a danger in properly executed spin training. The idea that the airplane is out of control in this mode isn’t true. Indeed while with PPL and CPL students there is no purpose to progressing the spin beyond a single turn, I have done more with instructor students since many come to it with the idea that any more than that is death, and the outright terror a few have exhibited toward the exercises isn’t conducive to good instructing. Not only can the manoeuvre be entered, but also executed to the point where one can specify how much of a fraction of the turn one wants.

One should also say that while the final turn is a common place to enter a spin, it’s not the only place. An overshoot with a climbing turn is probably the next most common place. Pilots “buzzing” something are frequently distracted (looking over their shoulder so see who got disturbed, or operating a camera in the process) and pitch too far up, possibly already engaged in a turn, and worse than the final turn, are at full power. The positive is that they may have already gained enough altitude to recover depending on how their energy was managed prior to.

Lastly while the probability of making a recovery from cruise flight is small, I can think of one crew who would be alive today if possibly the pilot was better acquainted with spin avoidance and recovery.

Pilots get into inadvertent spins because they don’t know what one is, and once there don’t recognize that they need to do something, never mind what to do. Not teaching the spin is like teaching swimming staying out of the water. Sure you can talk about it, and go through the motions, when you can reasonably safely get in the pool to get real knowledge and skill. The danger of drowning during the training is there and the risk is taken, though you’d have to be pretty inattentive, have a pretty incompetent trainer, or combine it with some serious stupidity to drown.

[photofly]

We will continue to see stall spin accidents on the base to final turn in VFR

But we don’t see very many stall spin accidents on base to final turns, do we?

Certainly not nearly as many as we would if we practiced spin entry and recovery at or below circuit altitude, which appears to be what you’re suggesting.

[rookiepilot]

We will continue to see stall spin accidents on the base to final turn in VFR

But we don’t see very many stall spin accidents on base to final turns, do we?

Certainly not nearly as many as we would if we practiced spin entry and recovery at or below circuit altitude, which appears to be what you’re suggesting.

I've said absolutely nothing of the kind.

Don't put words in my mouth.

I'm raising questions of omission in the current training syllabus.

[Big Pistons Forever]

There is no common aircraft that I can think of where if immediate action to reduce AOA and stop the yaw at the first indication of loss of controlled flight; is taken the aircraft will not immediate recover back to controlled flight.

By definition to teach a student how to recover from a spin, the aircraft has to be spinning, which again by definition means immediate recovery action was not taken so that a full departure into the spin mode was allowed to progress and indeed encouraged by the application of pro spin control inputs, something that you would never do in normal flight. This IMO is negative training

I have done lots of spin training as part of a basic aerobatic course. The spin is a aerobatic maneuver and belongs in aerobatic training. There is no value in IMO teaching spins in non aerobatic flight training because the emphasis should be placed on recognizing the imminent departure form controlled flight and taking automatic instinctive recovery action so that the aircraft can never enter the spin.

[Aviatard]

Don’t want to spin? Don’t stall. Don’t want to stall? Look at the horizon (not the airspeed.)

[Squaretail]

There is no common aircraft that I can think of where if immediate action to reduce AOA and stop the yaw at the first indication of loss of controlled flight; is taken the aircraft will not immediate recover back to controlled flight.

By definition to teach a student how to recover from a spin, the aircraft has to be spinning, which again by definition means immediate recovery action was not taken so that a full departure into the spin mode was allowed to progress and indeed encouraged by the application of pro spin control inputs, something that you would never do in normal flight. This IMO is negative training

I have done lots of spin training as part of a basic aerobatic course. The spin is a aerobatic maneuver and belongs in aerobatic training. There is no value in IMO teaching spins in non aerobatic flight training because the emphasis should be placed on recognizing the imminent departure form controlled flight and taking automatic instinctive recovery action so that the aircraft can never enter the spin.

I have to differ, if only because you and I would never make those inputs in a normal flight because we know the results. Students who don’t have that knowledge, and pilots who never get that DO make those inputs, by accident or otherwise. I really can’t say that I would be a better pilot without that knowledge. Stalling is also something that should never happen in normal flight, but teaching about it without seeing what it is, makes the teaching less effective. The principal of EFFECT is in play here. To recognize the imminent departure, you have to see and feel it. I’m not arguing for full turn or multiple turn spins, but incipient spins are spins. Otherwise we would call them happy fun sudden-wing drops or something.

You are right that emphasis should be placed upon recognition and avoidance, but like fire prevention, if you haven’t seen one before, you’re going to be standing there stunned when the blaze is well underway. The parallels in lots of other training and practice of skills is there, you can tell people about skidding and counter steering theory all day long, but there will be night and day between who knows theory and who has done it - even in the controlled conditions of a driving course, like the altitude in a practice area - to those who haven’t. You can say the same thing about a thousand activities where a small risk in training is worth the larger skill it imparts.

At the end of it, I find it a hard argument to make that training I got was too much, and others shouldn’t get it.

[PilotDAR]

Don’t want to stall? Look at the horizon (not the airspeed.)

Well, sometimes, but the not times really are a big element of the problem. Let alone flying in the mountains, even taking off a lake, with rising ground around, the horizon may not be representative of the pitch attitude you're hoping (needing) to maintain. This is a real problem, as a reasonably experienced pilot hired to fly an airplane for which I was responsible, who had been sent on a "mountain course" got himself disoriented on an otherwise perfect flying day, because he flew to a place in the sky where the horizon was most certainly not where he thought it would be, and stalled and spun in as a result. He knew better, and still got it wrong....

[rookiepilot]

I could easily argue, a student learning spin training in a benign - stalling 152 up at 6000 feet, becoming comfortable with being able to recover, directly leads to the same pilot, later moving up to a SR22, much faster and less benign stall -- later stalling and spinning in the pattern.

UNLESS proper low speed pattern handling is taught as well -- I don't think its sufficiently covered in the PPL course.

Another example -- to Dar's Mtn flying accident referenced above:

Why aren't PPL's taught minimum radius steep turns, using 20 degrees of flap?

[PilotDAR]

... which is why it's wise to seek competent type training well into your flying career. Our industry leaves it mostly to the insurance companies to see that pilots get some type training when they're about to fly something new. Sure, we can't be conducting spin training on these more advanced types, but whenever I've done type training for a new pilot, I've always done approach to stall, with a keen focus on coordination as we slowed.

For the few times when I thought the new pilot was not approach to stall seriously, at altitude, I would stall the plane not well coordinated, and that would usually be memorable for them.

[CpnCrunch]

At the end of it, I find it a hard argument to make that training I got was too much, and others shouldn’t get it.

Well there is this accident, and the other recent one where a student pancaked into a field while having fun doing spins with passengers. I don't think either would have happened if there was no spin training. I'm not sure what a full spin teaches over and above recovery after a wing drop.

For myself, the main concern is structural failure.

[digits_]

At the end of it, I find it a hard argument to make that training I got was too much, and others shouldn’t get it.

Well there is this accident, and the other recent one where a student pancaked into a field while having fun doing spins with passengers. I don't think either would have happened if there was no spin training. I'm not sure what a full spin teaches over and above recovery after a wing drop.

For myself, the main concern is structural failure.

?

If the pilot has the personality willing to spin with an out of limit CG (likely), disregarding safety rules (not enough altitude) with pax, then what makes you think he wouldn't try this if he wasn't trained for it?

[Aviatard]

Why aren't PPL's taught minimum radius steep turns

They are. At least, the instructors I train do teach them.